2011/12/31 by Robert Bennett, Claudia Eberlein
Physics and Astronomy · #Atomic and Molecular Physics #Classical mechanics #Computational physics #Condensed matter physics #Dielectric #Electron #Electron magnetic dipole moment #Magnetic field #Magnetic moment #Magnetization #Moment (physics) #Physics #Quantum Electrodynamics and Casimir Effect #Quantum and Classical Electrodynamics #Quantum electrodynamics #Quantum mechanics #quant-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1088/1367-2630/14/12/123035
published as New J. Phys. 14 (2012) 123035 · 5 pages, 1 figure
arxiv created 2012/12/11 · openalex publication_date 2012/12/31 · arxiv updated 2013/02/12 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/06
Boundary-dependent radiative corrections that modify the magnetic moment of an electron near a dielectric or conducting surface are investigated. Normal-mode quantization of the electromagnetic field and perturbation theory applied to the Dirac equation for a charged particle in a weak magnetic field yield a general formula for the magnetic moment correction in terms of any choice of electromagnetic mode functions. For two particular models, a non-dispersive dielectric and an undamped plasma, it is shown that, by using contour integration techniques over a complex wave vector, this can be simplified to a formula featuring just integrals over TE and TM reflection coefficients of the surface. Analysing the magnetic moment correction for several models of surfaces, we obtain markedly different results from the previously considered simplistic ‘perfect reflector’ model, which is due to the inclusion of physically important features of the surface like evanescent field modes and dispersion in the material. Remarkably, for a general dispersive dielectric surface, the magnetic moment correction of an electron nearby has a peak whose position and height can be tuned by choice of material parameters.